On the Value of Service Age Information

General service distributions are very common in real-life applications, yet they are less studied in the literature of strategic queueing due to the complex analysis they require. This paper aims to address this research gap by studying how service age information, which is the information regarding the time elapsed since the beginning of the current service, influences customers' strategic joining decisions in queueing systems with general service distributions. We use a stylized model to analyze the joining behavior of a newly arriving customer who observes both the queue length and the current service age. To explore the value of information, we compare the results with those of an observable M/G/1 queue without service age information. We show that customers' decisions are simplified when service age is provided, resulting in a unique threshold strategy. We find that disclosing service age information can increase system performance. Moreover, for intermediate congestion levels, both throughput and social welfare are improved if service age information is provided to customers. We fully characterize the optimal disclosure policy for both a throughput-maximizing provider and a social planner, and we show how the policy depends on the system parameters.